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Real Estate Fortune

As soon as Gene's wife saw the Teetering Rock house, she wanted to move into it. It had a wonderful floor plan. It was a one-story property with a beautiful self-cleaning pool, way out in the northwest. We purchased this from an investor who was offering an owner-carry. It had a very interesting twist. We came in with 5,000 to secure the property, signed a deed of trust putting us on the title, and arranged an interest-only loan for two years at 7 percent. So, we were paying seven percent on...

Protects the home from the bank calling the loan due (better known as protection from the due-on-sale clause. 2. Offers asset protection from spurious lawsuits. Gene Burns' Checklist for Buying Subject to Using a Land Trust 1. Seller signs the Binding Legal Agreement 2. Determine if the Title Company will insure a Land Trust a. If not, transfer Property into an LLC 3. Have all documents notarized and recorded in the County Recorder's Office a. Compare local rents vs. existing mortgage payments...

That's one home a week for an entire year. There were many ways to dissect the challenge we set ourselves, but time dominated everything. The pressure of buying 52 homes in 52 weeks was more intense than we could imagine. We had to see a lot of homes kiss a lot of frogs. There were times when we said, Can we just do three or Can't we just stop now Why are we doing this, anyway Dolf told Gene he couldn't run up to Las Vegas from Phoenix (where he lived) five...

AUTHORIZATION TO RELEASE INFORMATION By this written notice, I (We) authorize you to release any and all information regarding loan number_ to _, if entity and its officers and or agents or assigns . This authorization shall remain in full force and effect until rescinded by me (us) in a subsequent written notice of such to you. I (We) further authorize you to forward any documentation regarding the above referenced loan to_by mail, facsimile, hand delivery, or any other manner of transmission....

As Dolf relates, Gene had unstoppable dedication to the task of sourcing properties. One night we were driving from Las Vegas to Phoenix. It was pitch dark, with no street lights, no moon, and no traffic. We were minding our own business, telling stories and laughing, when we noticed these eerie blue lights. We stopped laughing somewhat when we realized they were the flashing lights of a highway patrol car coming up behind us. We pulled over and turned the interior lights on so that the officer...

Chapter 1 The Real Estate Challenge 1 Gene's Early Real Estate Deals 6 chapter 2 What We Did in Vegas and What You Can An Explosion of an Experience 13 chapter 3 Determining Your Strategy and Real Estate Acquisition Program (REAP) 42 The Veteran Who Came Home to Die 63 Four Dobermans and a Private Eye 68 Three Bed, Two Bath, One Trans Am 72 chapter 5 Learning to Ask for Help 81 The Beautiful Girl and the Private Eye 83 When We Party, We Like to Party 95 The Looks Too Good to Be True, chapter 6...

Gene didn't love the real estate game from the start. The first house I bought was in Los Angeles. I bought at the wrong time. I overpaid. I had no idea what I was doing. I made such a bad decision, that in the end I had to do a short sale back to the bank. I just wanted to focus on my career as a magazine publisher. I thought, I'm too stupid to do real estate I'm great at magazines. To make matters even worse, after losing 70,000 in the short sale to the bank, the federal government sent me a...

Tahiti Isle was a great house, in a great neighborhood. It belonged to a nurse who had developed carpal tunnel syndrome and couldn't work at the hospital any more. She couldn't make the payments, so she quit-claimed the house to her son, who lived with her. When the son divorced, he couldn't make the payments either. They thought that the monthly payment was 1,200 and that the outstanding debt was 142,000. When we met them and inspected the house, we had them sign an Authorization to Release...

Make sure you have everything leading up to the eviction in writing, especially the rental agreement. 2. Enlist the services of an eviction service. 3. Have the eviction service deliver a five-day pay-or-quit notice to the tenants. 4. If they have not paid within five days, have the eviction service organize for the necessary paperwork to be filled out at the local courthouse, getting a judge to authorize the eviction. The local sheriff then supervises the locking out of the tenants. learned...

Up until this point in our quest to buy 52 homes, we had stuck to our plan Buy three- or four-bedroom homes in highly-appreciating areas, in the 150,000 to 250,000 range. Then Katie Simmons contacted Gene and asked him if he was interested in taking a look at a lease-back property in north Las Vegas. He had never heard that term before so he went to take a look at it. The house was a fully furnished model with all of the furniture, all of the upgrades, and all of the landscaping in place and...

A house on Mornings Dawn in northwest Las Vegas has an amazing view at the very rim of the mountains surrounding Red Rock Canyon. The challenge of the property was a very tall brown soundwall on one side of the property. An older investor had bought the house, but couldn't find a renter because of construction in the subdivision. He was a strange guy and an even stranger investor. Most investors put as little money into a deal as possible. He bought a new property that hadn't been built yet,...

While we were waiting for our advertising to kick in, a new Pulte phase called Silverstone Golf Course had opened in northwest Las Vegas. The more we learned about spec homes, the more we were interested in the power of phase one purchasing being one of the first buyers to purchase a home in a new subdivision. We've always felt golf courses have high appreciation and demand. People love playing golf. At the time we were looking at this subdivision there was talk of reducing the number of new...

One of the hardest things to do is go into someone's home and say, Hi, I'm Gene. I'm interested in buying your house. Could you show me around as an icebreaker. You're sometimes walking into tense situations. People are behind on their payments. They know that you know that. It's up to you to create instant rapport, to put them at ease. Don't promise them anything. Try to be a little reluctant. When you're dealing with men, you don't want to come in wearing a three-piece suit. That's why Gene...

Gene's niece, Cassie Siegler, had purchased a new home on a street called Munos in an area called The Vistas, one of the last pristine areas in Las Vegas. Up against Red Rock Canyon National Monument, it overlooks the entire valley. Gene felt that this was possibly the best area of all to invest in. Cassie secured her position in another new property for 2,000, with the home to be completed within eight months. Listening to her and the process she was going through was fascinating, especially...

Formula Bought subject to existing financing. Our agreement with the seller We paid 6,000 to take over the debt of 150,000. We had sold it as a lease-option (with an option fee of 7,000) for a projected profit of 45,000, but the lease-option fell over, and we sold the property on the open market for 250,000. The blackjack dealer's wife was at the mall when a man bumped into her daughter. She got angry and hit the stranger with her purse, who turned out to be...

Source Seller contacted us through our advertisement in the Nellis Air Force Base newspaper. Formula Bought subject to existing financing. Our agreement with the seller We paid 5,000 down and assumed responsibility for the 180,000 debt, even though the deed of trust remained in the seller's name. Owing to the seller's circumstances, we deeded the house back to them, with a 30,000 second deed of trust (interest free) back to us. Mrs. Ellette still lives in the house, but if she ever sells, we...

Source of house Buyer's real estate agent. Source of tenant Marketing on our Las Vegas web site. Formula Bought off the plan (closed with builder financing) and sold as a lease-option. Projected profit on sale of house 245,000. money to closing. This was a dream come true a 2,000 investment on a 250,000 home, which would appreciate before we had to bring in financing. Dolf was behind this 100 percent but was concerned Gene was going to have to sign for the properties under his name. Before that...

Source Found through our buyer's real estate agent. Formula Bought subject to existing financing and sold as a lease-option. our progress to buy 52 homes in 52 weeks. We felt we were on a roll with owner-carries another term for buying subject to existing finance. The Las Vegas market was brimming with properties with little or no equity, and the market overall was sluggish in the winter of 2003. As a result, many people were motivated to sell with terms favorable to the buyer. Houses were very...

Source Seller contacted us through our advertisements. Our lease-option agreement with the seller (a) We pay 900 per month for three years. (b) We pay 180,000 at the end of three years. (c) We give the seller 50 percent of our profit if we on-sell. Our lease-option agreement with our tenant-buyer (a) He pays us 1,000 per month in rent. (b) He pays us 5,000 as a nonrefundable option fee (but the 5,000 went toward the purchase price if he exercised the option). (c) He may buy the property from us...

Source of house Buyer's real estate agent. Source of tenant Open house. Formula Bought subject to existing financing and sold as a lease-option. Projected profit on sale of house 81,000. At that exact moment, the funding kicked in. The escrow agent told the flight attendant's agent the funding had begun. She added that by law we were in compliance with the contract, had fulfilled our obligation, and this would be the escrow company's position if the situation went to court. Gene stopped...

Source of house Buyer's real estate agent. Source of buyer From our Las Vegas web site. Formula Bought as owner-carry financing, and sold as a lease-option. Projected profit on sale of house 136,000. with many model lease-backs, the numbers just didn't work for us, and we were unable to get the deals to work. Nonetheless we liked the area, bought a piece of dirt, and with 7,000 down, had an identical home built for 234,000.

Formula Bought subject to existing financing and sold as a lease-option. Costs 1,800 in commissions, 5,000 in property taxes. Collected 5,000 option fee. Profit on sale of house 25,200. other words, a home worth 200,000 today, but with an exercise price of 280,000, would attract a commission of 2,800 today. Given that most lease-options do not go through to eventual sale, this seemed a bit rich to us. So from there on in, we offered a flat 1,000 finder's fee for agents bringing us a...

Source of house Buyer's real estate agent. Source of buyer advertisement in newspaper. Formula bought with owner-carry financing and sold as a lease-option. The family rented the house on a lease-option. It was an easy experience, Rick said. Everything was very simple. They are paying close to 1,700 a month, which is covering our mortgage. The only concern Rick and Belinda had was whether the house would be worth the 289,000 they contracted to acquire it for. They need not have worried. The...

Formula Bought subject to existing financing. Our agreement with the seller We assumed responsibility for the 133,000 debt. We then lease-optioned the property for two years, with an exercise price of 153,000. The monthly cash flow surplus was 80. ment in Las Vegas. He was a retired Marine and Greyhound Bus driver. Their daughter's husband, a San Diego Marine, received orders to go to Iraq. Larry and his wife went and lived in San Diego for seven months to...

Source of house Buyer's real estate agent. Source of tenant Prospective tenant who didn't want an existing house we had for lease. Formula Bought subject to existing finance and sold as a lease-option. Again, we simple needed to ask for help in this case, to ask anyone who looked at a property of ours but didn't rent or buy it, what it was they were really looking for. We started to shift our focus from finding tenants for our vacant homes (tough in the market at that time) to finding homes for...

A beautiful girl walks into a private eye's office and asks for a favor. It sounds like a movie, but that's how the story of our home on Blue View begins. Our private investigator friend Eddie LaRue was in his office one day when the daughter of a friend stopped in to see him. She was in a divorce and needed advice. Laura, we'll call her, wanted her estranged husband out of the house and off the deed, so she could sell it. LaRue recommended Gene and gave him a call. Gene looked at the house it...

The house on Anchor Drive taught us many lessons, including to trust our gut feeling. The deal was one of our most bizarre. It was being sold by a Mr. Hamia, who had come to Las Vegas from Canada, bought about 30 homes, and promptly cheated a lot of people. Warrants went out for his arrest. Of course at the time we did not know this. Apparently the authorities are still looking for this guy. He called Gene and said he wanted to sell a house. It was a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a...

At some point, you realize that you don't need to see every house you are considering buying before signing a contract. Exactly when that occurs varies from investor to investor. But when you look at sufficient numbers of properties, you acquire a sense of the neighborhood and variations from house to house. In Las Vegas, which is very much a tract housing community (entire blocks are built with nearly identical homes), it gets easy to know what kind of house you are likely considering. If you...

We advertised everywhere we could think of. Some advertisements ended up in the Nellis Air Force Base newspaper. A retired enlisted man we'll call Mr. Ellette had terminal cancer. The cancer center in Las Vegas was closing, so Ellette was moving to California. He needed someone to take over his house payments. After some discussions with Mr. Ellette and his wife, we paid 5,000 and agreed to take over the monthly payments on his 180,000 mortgage (there was no equity in the house). It was a new...

Always hire a title agent to read title reports. Your time is better spent looking for more deals, and the title agents know more about the subject than you probably do, anyway. jargon. If you're putting money into a deal, you want to make sure there's nothing encumbering the property. The owner wanted 5,000, and he wanted to stay in the house through Christmas. We agreed. Filling Tahiti Isle wasn't easy, even though it was in great condition. We tried open houses, flyers, advertising, and...

Not only does Dolf contend that there are 101 ways to massively increase the value of a property without spending much money on it, but true to form he sits down and details them in writing. In this book, Dolf shares some obvious and some esoteric ways that you can easily increase the value of your property by far more than the cost of the improvement. If by spending 1,000 to build a carport, you increase the rental income of that property by 1,000 per year (which is a 100 percent return on...

The real Las Vegas jackpots are not in the casinos, but in the suburbs. The astounding housing boom in the nation's fastest-growing city had been going on for eight years, and was and is set to continue despite temporary slowdowns. A low cost of living, low taxes, warm climate, great food and entertainment, and newcomers pouring in from all over the country but especially California and the Midwest have fueled consecutive years of record growth. The explosive market Dolf had been predicting for...

The Insider's Guide to Real Estate Investing Loopholes reveals the best and most effective tax loopholes that successful real estate investors use to maximize their profits. This revised edition covers the new tax laws, and features new and updated case studies and examples. Real estate is probably the best investment money can buy, in part because there are so many profit-maximizing tax loopholes that directly benefit real estate investors. In this practical and straightforward real estate...

Whenever Gene found a house, he used the Real Estate Acquisition Program, a software program Dolf created and developed, to see if the house was worth investigating further. REAP is a powerful property analysis tool enabling users to analyze the investment value of real estate. After entering all the pertinent details of a property, including the purchase price, rental income, vacancy rate, property taxes, management fees, maintenance costs, homeowners association fees, and mortgage details,...